2020 MIT Mystery Hunt

2020 MIT Mystery Hunt

Every year I write about latest MIT Mystery Hunt puzzles that might be appealing to mathematicians. Before diving into mathy puzzles, I would like to mention two special ones:

Unfortunately math wasn’t prominent this year:

  • Food Court—This is a probability puzzle that is surprisingly uninspiring. There is no mystery: the puzzle page contains a list of probability problems of several famous types. But this puzzles can find great use in probability classes.
  • Torsion Twirl—Mixture of dancing and equations. I love it.
  • People Mover—Logical deduction at the first stage.

On the other hand, Nikoli-type puzzles were represented very well:

  • The Ferris of Them All—Several different Nikoli puzzles on a wheel.
  • Toddler Tilt—Not exactly a Nicoli puzzle, but some weird logic on a grid, some music too.
  • The Dollhouse Tour—Not exactly a Nicoli puzzle, but some weird logic on a grid, some pictures too.
  • The Nauseator—The first part of the puzzle is a huge nonogram.
  • Domino Maze—A non-trivial Thinkfun puzzle.
  • Backlot—Finding a path on a grid with a fractal structure.
  • Whale—Variation on Rush Hour.

Some computer sciency puzzles:

Cryptography:

A couple of puzzles with the mathy side hidden:


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2 Comments

  1. Todd Etter:

    Did you check out Star Maps? That seems pretty mathy (graph theory). https://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2020/puzzle/star_maps/

  2. tanyakh:

    Yes, I skipped it because it was a physical puzzle.

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